‘House’: From nuts to aliens and speed racer

Episode 6, “Whatever It Takes,” focuses on two patients in a parallel story: One, a young drag racer who collapses after a winning race, and two, a mysterious patient of the CIA’s.

The CIA recruits House to help them treat an employee who returned ill from overseas, and they suspect an assassination attempt. House is taken to the roof of his hospital, where a helicopter awaits. House starts scarfing down nuts and enjoying the good life. He’s taken to a beautiful doctor with the CIA, Samira Terzi (Michael Michele, once of “ER”), who says they’ve also got a Mayo Clinic immunologist, Dr. Curtis, consulting on the case.

Terzi takes House and Curtis to see the patient. They won’t tell the doctors anything about the patient’s medical history, but “John” is gaunt and has burns all over. All they can say is he went to Bolivia and ate a lot of chestnuts. House thinks John has pancratitis from excessive drinking. Curtis prefers an untraceable poison theory. Terzi goes with Curtis and allows treatment for radiation poisoning. House tampers with the treatment, and John gets worse.

Terzi decides to treat John for blood cancer, which House suggested. House needs a consult, so he calls Wilson, who doesn’t believe House is at CIA headquarters. “Either you’re sprawled naked on your floor with an empty bottle of Viocodin or collapsed naked in front of your computer with an empty bottle of Viagra. Please tell me which, because Chase has another pool going,” Wilson says.

During several rather coarse sexual comments, House offers Terzi one of his fellowship posts, which she declines. Then John seems to have radiation poisoning after all. Curis tells House he was stubborn and arrogant to interfere with the treatment. They try an experimental treatment to try to fix the damage caused by House’s delay in treating for radiation poisoning. John tells House about being at Carnival for 40 days with a dancer. House knows that Carnival in Bolivia is only 8 days, meaning John was really in Brazil, and those nuts John ate weren’t chestnuts but Brazil nuts. Brazil nuts, it seems, have selenium, and too much can lead to the same symptoms John has. The treatment, though, is the same.

Terzi is disgusted with her superior, who misled the doctors on which country John was in.

Meanwhile Foreman is left in charge of the Fellows to diagnose Speed Racer. Foreman feels confident it’s just heat stroke, but that doesn’t mean that a dozen tests and even more diagnoses won’t be tossed around during the hour. She begins having seizures and weird things happen to her eyes, then runs a high fever. The fellows toss around ideas, thinking maybe she has MS or (wait for it)…. lupus! Fools! It’s NEVER lupus! When telling the results of the tests, Cole, our single father, asks them to hurry it up, because he needs to get home to his son.

Cutthroat Witch says, “Can I have a kid too? I’m working too hard.” Taub, the annoying plastic surgeon, offers to oblige her. “If I had two minutes and some antinausea meds, I’d take you up on that,” she says.

Anyway, the Fellows decide independently to treat her for both symptoms, which paralyze her. Brennan, our Third World doctor who has worn the same shirt in every episode, thinks it’s polio. “Brilliant,” Taub says. “We should search her home for FDR’s remains or a time machine.” Foreman gets disgusted and kicks Brennan off the case. Brennan returns with a positive test for polio.

Foreman mourns that he was stubborn and arrogant in dismissing the polio idea. Brennan suggests strong doses of Vitamin C, an experiment tried in the 1950s but halted for lack of funding. It seems to work, and Speed Racer gets use of her legs back.

House returns and thinks things fit too well, that Brennan manipulated the tests by virtually poisoning the patient to get a polio result. Brennan truly believes Vitamin C can cure polio, and says he was trying to use the high-profile case to get attention for his cause. House orders Brennan to quit, then tells Foreman to call the cops. Speed racer, it seems, really only had heat stroke after all.

House leaves the hospital and finds Terzi waiting for him. She has quit her job and wants one of his three fellowship post. House stands there, stunned. In the course of the show, Cameron tells Foreman she misses the intensity of working with House.

So will Cameron come back? Will House really keep Terzi?

The show was a nice change of pace, getting House out of the confines of the hospital with the bickering fellowship candidates. He was boyishly excited to be on the helicopter and private jet. We learned his ring tone is “Whatta Man” by Salt N Pepa. When Cutthroat Witch calls, House not only has that as her name, but rejects her call. And the director finally did that really cool thing again, where the patient has a problem and the camera goes inside the body and shows the organs going haywire.

Still not enough Chase. I’m beginning to wonder why he’s even on the payroll. It’s getting pathetic how little they use him now. My 92-year-old mom is crushed, and has turned her affection to Wilson. But there was this little snippet above between Chase and Cameron, who broke up their real-life engagement during the summer.